"Wuxtry, Boy Commandos!" - January 2o26

Hello there.  New one.  Read along.

I try to keep a list.  One per month, ideally, although during holiday season posting tends to slip.  Anything new, anything old: if it's words + pictures, it gets noted.  (Datestamps) indicate year of creation / serialization / collection, as accurately as possible.  I should track publisher info in these...  But I haven't been, as that's not a principle creative / creator-specific element.  Sometimes I note colourists or letterers, but by & large if I mention those aspects it goes in the body of the "review".  As each month advances, the list gets updated but does not get bumped to the top; if you're tracking these you'll either have to scroll through my boring blah-di-blah to find it, OR bookmark the entry.  I recommend bookmarking, because things slip my mind.

Girls' Last Tour vols. 1-6 (2o14-18) - written & illustrated by Tsukumizu

An excellent series.  Cunningly staged dérive.  Scribblecore sci-fi heartbreaker.

Flex Mentallo (remastered colour) (1996) - written by Grant Morrison & illustrated by Frank Quitely

Didn't get more 1996 than this.  In many ways the perfect GM / FQ project.  All-Star Superman had low points, weak issues.  No dogpaddling bollocks here, just 4 issues of peak performance, superdense, maximum effort from all involved.  Only wish it was in the '96 colours, instead of the 2o12 sadfilter remix, plainly inspired by the insipid Incal job.  What the fuck was up with desaturation being the mark of the twentyteens, hunh? 

Wolf vol. 1 (2015) - written by Ales Kot & illustrated by Ricardo López Ortiz

Library filler, waiting between books.  Not what I come to Kot for.  It's genre bluffing.  The watered down take is it's an exmilitary Constantine in L.A.  It could have maybe been more.  Its biggest sin is it isn't a substitute for Desolation Jones.  Doesn't work too hard to compel me.  Ortiz's backgrounds are beautifully executed digital creations; I only wished I liked how the artist handles faces.  Their Zero issue was pretty cool.  I was less into this.

Hellboy In Mexico (2016) - written by Mike Mignola & illustrated by Richard Corben

Already read these, last December.  Demanded a re-visit.

The Best of The Spirit (194o-5o) - written & illustrated by Will Eisner & paid art assistants

More than a character:  The Spirit is a time & space I return to.  The eternal city, with its logotecture & Eisnershpritz, its bountiful substratum of caper & crime:  it's a space I like to haunt along with Danny Colt.  The way Eisner draws eyes, the way he folded and draped fabric, the easy clarity with which he captured light through a window....  A timeless style and a style out of time: the Spirit of an ageless age.

More Weight: a Salem story (2o25) - written & illustrated by Ben Wickey

Easy to see why this made so many best of lists.  It's been the best of this year.  Began it last night and have been dashing alongside, a little winded by now, but it's one of those days that started off negative one and the windchill has the general temp well below that, so I've all the isolation & reserves of quiet one needs to make this kind of sprint.

This book put me much in mind of my mother as it does the present moment.  I'll bore you with explanations of neither.  Suffice it to say this is a most Applicable book about the american experiment and what the test results look like, from our weird, diminished vantage point here, at the end of this thing.  It's a crushing book.  If you lay down with your chin upon your chest and the book staring you in the eye like one of Fuseli's demons, you'll rise with a righteous dent in your heart.

More Weight is a fucking banger.  A lot of people set out to imitate Alan Moore.  This book does the rarest of tricks:  it exceeds and excels at Moore's game, which was never exclusively Moore's-- it excels at literature.  It's as clever as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Pynchon, with twice the feeling of them both combined.  And let's not neglect the art:  Ben Wickey is one of the Greats, moving between styles and palettes with sublime confidence.  The cartooning is deft and the colours are Alive and between them and the keen intelligence guiding the production it's so self-assured I'd call Wickey's work "olympian", if not for the humility and wry humour radiating throughout.  The author doesn't see himself Above Things, does not attempt to act holier-than-thou or contemptuous of the subject.

A very humane, human work, in addition to being a king hell opening act on the stage of this dread year 2026.

The Giant: Orson Welles, The Artist & The Shadow (2o25) - written & illustrated by Youssef Daoudi

Perfectly serviceable.  Enjoyable if you appreciate Welles.  Maybe not what I wanted out of a bio-comic, having just emerged from 'More Weird'.  It reads... light.  Sincerely wish Welles' adaptation of 'The Trial' got more mention than a bloody reduced reproduction poster.  I would've liked to have seen Youssef Daoudi's version of Anthony Perkins.  Anyroad.  Good caricatures.  Fun linework.  Feels more like a DVD documentary than a graphic novel.  If I say any more I'll just start flaying the corpse.

Dick Tracy (1955) - written & illustrated by Chester Gould

The Blackthorne reprints!  Coming soon!